I’m a junior who is looking for colleges with great economics/business program. However, I am not sure how to decide. So, I need your help on deciding which school has great econ/business program. What is the main factor when you decide how good the program is? Is it internship opportunity, job employment of gradutes, or faculties? Please give me some specifics about choosing a college that offers great program. Than you. And by the way, if you are so kind, please recommend me some colleges with best econ/business program besides ivy league, but prestigious, including LAC.
Whether a school has a great program or not depends largely on what your objectives are. Are you a future Econ Phd? Headed for Wall Street? Planning to work internationally? Interested in non-profit management? Looking to start your own company? Different schools have different strengths. You need to decide upon your selection criteria for a program. What part of the country you want to live and work in can matter too since the alumni networks and business community connections are often strongest in the area where the school is located.
And because students often change their minds about their majors, it’s important to be comfortable with the entire school not just the business or econ depts. Also, some schools require you to apply specifically to their business programs at the time you are an undergrad (Wharton comes to mind) so you need to check that too. (Most top schools have econ majors rather than business majors - part of their liberal arts educational mission - and therefore don’t usually have separate schools. But this is only a general rule so you need to check.)
By one indicator of quality, faculty publishing, these are a few undergraduate focused colleges that have excellent economics departments: Williams, Wellesley, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Claremont McKenna, Colgate, Vassar, Holy Cross, URichmond. Of these, Hamilton, Williams and Wellesley have a relationship with a recently developed Harvard Business School online certificate program, which will serve to diversify their curricula beyond straight economics.
These are some universities that are generally very strong in economics: MIT, UC-Berkeley, UChicago, Stanford, NYU, Northwestern, Duke, Brandeis.
It really depends on what you want to do.
For instance, there is a lot more to managing a business than understanding Economics. You also need to know the principles of Marketing, Operations, Corporate Finance, Org Behavior, Strategic Mgmt, International Business, and have at least some idea of Financial & Managerial Accounting (like understanding an income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet).
These principles also help investors/traders/Wall Street types to understand companies’ strengths and weaknesses, which is critical in valuating them and forecasting their futures.
Whether your degree is called a BS in Econ, BS in Marketing, BS in Finance, or BBA with any major tacked onto it, what’s important is to get a strong general business education if you are interested in either working in corporate America as an executive or a manager, working in investments, or becoming an entrepreneur. For any of those jobs, you should be taking classes in the fields highlighted above.
All of the schools listed above should be able to provide a broad enough business education. It might be more difficult at the LACs, but I imagine you could take most of the classes you’ll need, and hopefully pick up the rest with an MBA or on the job.
Here are some more strong Business/Econ programs (based on MBA and Econ grad school rankings, which tend to correlate strongly with undergrad quality):
Harvard
Princeton
Penn Wharton
Columbia
Dartmouth
Michigan
Virginia
Yale
Cornell
UCLA
Texas
WUSTL
Carnegie Mellon
Notre Dame
Emory
Indiana
Georgetown
UNC
Minnesota
Wisconsin
What are your stats?